Related papers: Conformations of entangled semiflexible polymers: …
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
Mutual uncrossability of polymers generates topological constraints on their conformations and dynamics, which are generally described using the tube model. We imaged confinement tubes for individual polymers within a F-actin solution by…
We present a computer simulation of entangled polymer solutions at equilibrium. The chains repel each other via a soft Gaussian potential, appropriate for semi-dilute solutions at the scale of a correlation blob. The key innovation to…
Motivated by the observation of the storage of excess elastic free energy - (prestress) -- in cross linked semiflexible networks, we consider the problem of the conformational statistics of a single semiflexible polymer in a quenched random…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
In the present work, four series of simulations are analyzed: entangled model networks of a) mono-disperse or b) poly-disperse weight distribution between the crosslinks, c) non-entangled phantom model networks and d) non-entangled model…
Semi-flexible polymers in crowded environments exhibit complex dynamics that play a crucial role in various biological and material design processes. Based on the classic reptation theory, it is generally believed that semiflexible polymers…
Loops undergoing thermal fluctuations are prevalent in nature. Ring-like or cross-linked polymers, cyclic macromolecules, and protein-mediated DNA loops all belong to this category. Stability of these molecules are generally described in…
The tube-like cages of stiff polymers in entangled solutions have been shown to exhibit characteristic spatial heterogeneities. We explain these observations by a systematic theory generalizing previous work by D. Morse (Phys. Rev. E…
The spatial correlations of entangled polymer dynamics are examined by molecular dynamics simulations and neutron spin-echo spectroscopy. Due to the soft nature of topological constraints, the initial spatial decays of intermediate…
Equilibration of polymer melts containing highly entangled long polymer chains in confinement or with free surfaces is a challenge for computer simulations. We approach this problem by first studying polymer melts based on the soft-sphere…
We simulate entangled linear polymers in free-standing thin film geometries where the confining dimension is on the same scale or smaller than the bulk chain dimensions. We compare both film-averaged and layer-resolved, spatially…
The transport of deformable particles through porous media underlies a wealth of applications ranging from filtration to oil recovery to the transport and spreading of biological agents. Using direct numerical simulations, we analyze the…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
We study dynamically crowded solutions of stiff fibers deep in the semidilute regime, where the motion of a single constituent becomes increasingly confined to a narrow tube. The spatiotemporal dynamics for wave numbers resolving the motion…
This study focuses on comparing the individual polymer chain dynamics in an entangled polymeric liquid under different shear and extension rates. Polymer chains under various shear rates and extension rates were simulated using a…
We present an extensive analysis of the relaxation dynamics of entangled linear polymer melts via long-time molecular dynamics simulations of a generic bead-spring model. We study the mean-squared displacements, the autocorrelation function…
Confinement is a versatile and well-established tool to study the properties of polymers either to understand biological processes or to develop new nano-biomaterials. We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer ring in weak…
The non-linear response of entangled polymers to shear flow is complicated. Its current understanding is framed mainly as a rheological description in terms of the complex viscosity. However, the full picture requires an assessment of the…
The non-linear stress-strain relation for crosslinked polymer networks is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Previously we demonstrated the importance of trapped entanglements in determining the elastic and relaxational…